By William Mackay: Irish heavyweight Martin Rogan (14-3, 7 KO’s) is expected to continue his sagging career despite losing three out of his last five fights, including a 5th round TKO to world class heavyweight contender Tyson Fury (18-0, 13 KO’s) last Saturday night at the Odyssey Arena, Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom.
Rogan will be turning 41 on May 1st, and he’s clearly seen better days. However, he may see the fact that he was competitive with Fury in three of the five rounds as evidence that he can find success against other fighters that aren’t quite as good as Fury. I think Rogan would have to really dig deep to find guys that he can beat at this point in his career because his stamina looks to be terrible and showed an inability to take body shots in the Fury loss. If Rogan continues to fight his opponents only have to throw something to his midsection and they’ll likely reproduce the results that Fury got.
The thing is Fury seemed to take it easy on his 40-year-old opponent by handicapping himself by changing to the southpaw stance and fighting the entire fight that side. He basically was in effect tying one of his hands behind his back and still beating Rogan by doing that. Fury would never risk doing such a foolish thing against a good fighter like David Price. He’s not crazy enough to do that against someone good.
If Rogan does continue his career, he needs to focus on 2nd and 3rd tier opposition. I wouldn’t put him in with any of the decent domestic level fighters like John McDermott, Tom Dallas, Dereck Chisora or Sam Sexton. Rogan already was beaten twice by Sexton, so that tells you where Rogan stands as a fighter.
Rogan did land a few nice shots in the 1st and 2nd rounds against Fury, but most of his shots were easily picked off on the gloves of Fury. It was too easy for Fury even when he wasn’t punching back. The first two rounds Fury hung back and let Rogan throw all the punches and still, Fury was more than okay going into the 3rd.
I think Rogan needs to retire. He’s old and doesn’t have it anymore. He’ll only hurt himself by continuing to fight and risk injury or further stoppages. He doesn’t look like the same fighter that beat Max Skelton and gave Sam Sexton a ton of problems in two fights. Sure. I think Rogan can hang around and beat domestic level heavyweights but the better domestic level guys will beat him every time out with no problems.
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